It’s the age-old question: Are you better off eliminating your debt or saving up for your future? Ah, if only there was a simple answer! Unfortunately, there’s no obvious choice between the two. However, you can decide which is better for you and come up with financial goals to further your fiscal future.

Why Not Just Pay Off Debt?

If you’re facing super-high interest rates, it’s only logical that you should knock that out before worrying about your savings. After all, you might earn a bit of interest in a savings account, but your debt could be racking up crazy interest every month you don’t pay it off in full.

However, simply focusing on paying off your debt leaves you unprepared to face an emergency. If you’re unable to work or just need to have some cash on hand for an emergency situation, you could be in big trouble without a savings safety net. Without some money saved up, you’ll only have credit cards, putting you further in debt. See the problem?

Why Not Just Save for Retirement?

Your credit cards come with minimum payments for a reason, and the rest of your cash should go into your savings, right? Wrong! Paying only the minimum balance and chucking the rest into savings can seem like a good idea, especially if you’re approaching retirement, but if you’re not careful, you’ll retire with debts.

Sticking with the minimum payment amount on your debts means you’re throwing away money at interest. You’ll never see that cash again. Here’s a fun factoid: Banks want you to pay interest. That’s where they make their money. By paying simply the minimum payment, you’ll wind up paying far more in interest than if you paid just a little extra each month.

Find Your Balance

Debt, much like juggling, is all about balance and manipulation. You’ll need to manipulate your finances to find the right combination of debt repayment and savings. What you do with your cash depends on what your debts are, how old you are and what your retirement savings goals are.

Remember, for most retirement accounts, you can only withdraw about 4% each year after retirement safely. If you go above that, you risk running out of money. That means that a retirement savings of $1 million only gives you about $40,000 a year to work with once you’ve retired. If you retire with debts, you’ll have to repay them from your hard-earned retirement fund.

The easiest and best route for most people is to balance between paying off debts with high interest rates and saving a moderate amount each month. Figure out your debt with the highest interest rate. Put as much money as you can toward that debt until it’s gone. Then, pick your next-highest interest rate and pay that off. Rinse and repeat until you’re debt free. While you’re doing that, make sure you’ve a) built up a short term emergency savings and b) contributed to your retirement account. Remember, even if you can only afford to set aside a little bit of money each month, that’s still better than nothing.

It’s also important to stop accumulating debt at some point. For many people, debt comes as a result of emergency spending. If you don’t have a short-term, easily accessible backup savings account, you’ll have no choice but to put any emergency expenditures on a credit card. This puts you further in the hole and can make it harder to dig back out.

If you’re serious about retiring with a decent chunk of change without debt, you need to focus on both sides of the equation. Come up with a financial plan, perhaps with the help of an adviser, and stick with it. It may seem challenging, but when you’re enjoying a debt-free retirement, you’ll be glad you did.

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I think it ultimately depends on what type of debt you have. If you have a ton of high interest credit cards, then you should focus on those and hold off on saving for retirement. However, if you’re going to be in debt a long time (primarily due to student loans), then I think finding a balance is suitable.

I think it would be better to pay off your debts first. I agree to the other comments since you must avoid the high interest rates because after a year your debts will be a lot bigger. You can start saving after paying most of your debts.

I think that it is preferable to work on both at the same time. I definitely didn’t stop saving for retirement while we paid off our debts. Now I am glad because I didn’t miss out on those early years of compounding. Still, it is a personal choice.

I would prefer working on both at the same time, provided that the debt isn’t super high interest. If you’re carrying credit card debt at a 20% interest rate, that should be your main focus. If you have debts with interest rates in the single digits, I think you can safely pay off the debt and save at the same time.

I have student loan debt, but will NOT forego my 401k match. Mathimatically, I could probably save some money up front on the loans, but with the litle that I am putting away, it’s wouldn’t be much, and I’d rather get a head start on my compounding interest.

As far as consumer debt goes, I WOULD pay that off first, because things like credit cards usually have HUGE interest rates and ned to be squashed ASAP!

I’m probably do a little of both (pay off the debt and save for retirement). Thankfully all my student debt is paid so I don’t have to choose. Now it’s just a matter of deciding how much to save for retirement. Nice post!

Funny. People look at a million dollars and think it’s a ton of money. Once people see your 4% number and realize how little that provides (and in future inflated dollars, too!), they realize just how much savings they’ll really need.

I balance debt payoff with retirement savings, although my first priority was paying off the credit card debt. Once I did that, I moved from 100% debt payoff to 50/50 with student loans and retirement. Once the student loans are gone, I’ll definitely be sending more to the retirement accounts!

If you’re heading towards retirement with debt, it’s not a bad idea to look around and see where you can downsize. If you can do with a smaller home or just one car, downsizing can help you put your extra money towards debt payoff and retirement savings.

My angle on debt has always been to work it down to a fixed interest rate that is below any reasonable rate of return on an investment. By doing so, I know that there is no longer any rush to pay things off as long as I use any extra money to invest in things that can yield me a greater rate of return.

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